


The Killing Bed

by ackermom



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood, Bloodplay, Breathplay, Bruises, Choking, Daddy Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, Fighting Kink, Hate Sex, M/M, Marking, Stitches, Vomiting, [trumpets] my official gallirei drabble collection!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2020-05-14 09:03:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 7,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19270057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ackermom/pseuds/ackermom
Summary: Reiner takes it, or he wants it, and Galliard can never tell.





	1. get out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> july 2017  
> explicit sexual content, hate sex

Reiner knows when he is being mocked, and he knows it now: condescension plucks at Galliard’s lips and draws his mouth into a sneer, like he can’t help but talk to Reiner any other way, not even when they’re pressed against each other like this. His elbow digs into Reiner’s chest as he holds his arm across his neck, cutting his breath in and out at his will.

“Kiss me,” Galliard growls in a rough voice. 

The next time, he pins Reiner’s arms agains the wall, fingers digging bruises into Reiner’s skin, and he makes the request again, his voice getting harder, deeper, angrier.

He asks because he knows it is the only thing Reiner will not give him. Reiner relinquishes everything: his body, his mind. He will let Galliard take him raw until he forgets who he is; but he will not yield his lips, not to him, not to anyone. Galliard pushes for it still, out of spite or hatred. He does not want to kiss Reiner. He makes that clear from the contempt that shines in his eyes. All he wants right now, all he ever wants when they’re together, is to make Reiner feel his pain: to remind him, again, that everything is his fault.

“I don’t understand you,” Galliard says once after Reiner rolls out of his bed. He’s all bite when they play, but he recoils now, slunk back into the pillows, his arms crossed, his head low, and he doesn’t even look in Reiner’s direction. “Why do you keep coming back to me?”

Galliard lets him come back, and that might be the greater question. Reiner’s pain weighs heavy on his face and he does not feel like he should have to explain what he is looking for: release, relief, forgiveness. But he answers anyways, if only to wound Galliard in just the right way.

“I think you are what I deserve,” Reiner says. 

He feels the stiff air that settles between them. He feels Galliard’s glare turn to a scowl, and most of all, he feels the biting words that stab him when they are spat out at him like knives.

“Get out,” Galliard growls, and Reiner leaves without looking back.


	2. the threshold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> september 2017  
> explicit sexual content

But the memory of calloused fingers up his arms still lingers inside him. But he remembers those hands curving around his shoulders and trailing up his neck, coming up beneath his jaw to clench at his face. But he still feels the pit of anxiety in his stomach, weighing him down, turning his heart over and over itself, driving his shoulders up and his face to the side, the kind of nerves he’s not felt in a long time, perhaps ever in his life. But he wishes he hadn’t turned away. But he wants to feel that touch again.

These are the reasons that Porco hears in his mind, shouting at himself, you idiot, can’t you see it, the reasons he keeps sealed behind his tightly drawn lips. These are the reasons he can’t let go. These are the reasons he is here, now, his feet grounded outside Reiner’s door as he wrestles with his anger, convincing himself not to knock on this door.

He has been boiling for so long. He is full of hatred and anger and regret, and above all else, he is profoundly sad. For Marcel, for the world, for himself. He has never been so alone, not like has been in the last few years, and he hates because of that.

His knuckles rake across the wooden door when he pounds his fist against it, and he has a restless moment to let out the furious breath he’s been holding before the door opens.

Reiner already knows why he is here. Porco doesn’t even have to meet his eyes to know that, and he thinks that that’s the worst part of it all. He hates that Reiner understands him. He hates that they have traded places, not because he is so envious of Reiner, but because they share some kind of silence that he can never put into words. It’s why they do it like this, behind closed doors, beneath the shade of night, with grinding teeth and clenched fists and back against walls before either of them can speak.

He hates that he crawls here, week after week, and steps over the threshold in resignation and lets the door close quietly behind himself. He hates kissing Reiner, and he hates that Reiner knows. He hates how their bodies arch together as their touch deepens, as someone presses someone against the wall and clenches their fist behind their head and pushes harder.

He hates that he still comes here, but he wants to feel that touch again and it drives him indescribably mad.


	3. coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> september 2017

It's coffee, black and full-bodied. It's the good kind, the kind that the captain hands down to Zeke, that Zeke hands down to them. It's the kind that they usually trade to guards for extra hours off base or to city merchants for something to dull- not heighten- their senses. It's not the kind that he has ever shared with Porco before, so forgive Reiner if he lingers in the doorway a moment too long, unable to contain his bemusement. 

"Just sit down," Galliard says eventually. He mutters, halfway between a demand and a desire. 

Reiner can't read the blank look on his face. But he obliges. His knees are killing him and he's bleeding through his bandages again. He eases back into the chair across from Galliard and spares a glance over the city beneath them. The night verges on cold, a salty breeze rushing over the rooftop where they sit, but the coffee is still warm in its tin cup when Reiner silently accepts it from across the table. 

"You don't have to say anything," Galliard says. He turns his chair to face the sea, his back to Reiner. "What I mean is, don't take me."

He wasn't going to, but he's glad now that he's been excused. He sips at the coffee: delicious, even in all its bitterness.

"I just thought you looked like shit," Galliard says. "Coffee usually helps with that."

Reiner has watched many sunsets, some of them over the sea like this, none of them with Galliard. But the coffee is good, and he forgets for a while, as they sit in silence and let the world disappear around them, about the pain wracking through his body.


	4. knockout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> october 2017  
> fighting, blood, stitches

He gets sloppy.

He hits fast- one, two, punch, raw fists against bone; blood and sweat spits into the air. He gets hit faster. Knuckles slam into his jaw, and he sees stars before he hits the ground.

Reiner wakes on the floor of the gym with Galliard’s fingers in his mouth.

“Hold still,” Galliard mutters. “That knockout split your lip.”

He pulls the thread through the needle and Reiner passes out again.

“I didn’t know you could do stitches,” he says when he comes to again, blood smeared across his face, his breaths coming in tight gasps. The walls of the training gym dance in his vision, but on the far side of the sparring mat, he sees the puffed-up cadet who knocked him flat.

“I didn’t know you were going to get your ass handed to you by a fourteen year old,” Galliard says. He sits back on his heels and wipe Reiner’s blood on his pants. “I would have placed a bet.”

Reiner does not sit up. “I’m just out of practice.”

“You’re out of shape.”

“I just need to practice.”

“You need to start over, is what it looks like.”

He doesn’t want to argue with Porco, not now, not like this. He lets the ceiling spin and tries to regain the feeling in his fingers. But there’s an odd camaraderie to this: them sitting alone in the middle of the gym, while the cadets line the walls and whisper. They are few now. Reiner remembers their training days, when they thought they were endless, like the sunshine. Then he remembers watching his friends die, and he knows, as he licks the fresh stitches on his lips, that there are few things more precious than having someone who understands.

“You’re going to kill yourself at this rate,” Galliard says as Reiner sits up. It is not endearing.

“Fine by you,” Reiner mutters. “These stitches are shit. Are you trying to give me an infection?”

“I did you a favor, asshole. Anyways, if you’re going to die, make sure to do it somewhere we can take your stupid titan.”

The words conjure memories that Reiner knows are sore for both of them, and Galliard stands up. “Get yourself to a medic,” he says, “and don’t let any of these kids beat you up again.”


	5. glass veins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> december 2017  
> alcohol abuse

There is a voice coming from behind his bedroom door. His name is called in his nightmares, over and over, with fists on wood, until Reiner wakes in a sweat, brought back from the brink by a voice, a yell. The weight of sleep is thick in his trembling fingers when he fumbles out of his bed, his bare feet cold on the floor. There is the voice again. Someone on the other side of the wall is angry with him. When he trudges to the door, a loose sweater hanging from his frame, he wonders if he should be surprised to find it is Porco, brooding in the corridor. There is no emotion that Galliard feels for him besides anger, he thinks. And yet, Galliard is here in the midnight, shoving past Reiner to get into the room, a half-empty bottle of something potent clenched by the neck in one of his hands.

 _I wish this was your neck_ , is what Galliard would say. He turns and slams the door, barely missing Reiner’s fingers, before he staggers inside, catching his balance on the timid arm that Reiner offers.  _I wish you were this bottle and I was squeezing you so tight that your glass veins might shake between my fingers, too._

But that is not what Porco says. He says nothing. He knows this room well for someone who has only seen it in the candlelit darkness, and he collapses purposefully on Reiner’s chair, slams his swirling bottle on Reiner’s desk, and hangs his stupored gaze to Reiner’s window. 

“You walked here from town,” Reiner says. He sees the white dust on Porco’s uniform boots, the slippery trail that his footprints have painted across the wooden floor. “It’s freezing outside. You shouldn’t be out walking around.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about the weather,” Porco says from the chair. He stares out the window. The night is deep, dark, black. There is nothing to see. But he stares through the glass, as if mesmerized by the idea of what could be on the other side. Perhaps he is not looking through the glass. When Reiner steps towards him, the lamplight shifts in the reflection, and Porco jerks upright. 

Reiner picks up the bottle, and the liquor swirls in the lamplight as he holds it close to his face: potent, indeed. “What did you come here to talk about?” 

There is no drunken reach for the bottle, only a glance over the shoulder and a shift of the body, until Porco’s head rests beneath the arc of the armchair and his legs are splayed out like hands on a broken clock. His breaths are shallow.

“She enabled me,” he says with a flimsy gesture of the hand.

Reiner glances again at the bottle, before he tucks it onto a high shelf. “I believe Pieck is out of town.”

“Can you just pretend to be stupid for once?” Porco’s hands curl on the arms of the chair. “Piece of shit.” 

Some soft bird sings outside, calling into the night, and Reiner turns his gaze to the window, where he sees his tired reflection looking back at him. If this is what Porco was looking at, then he need not have looked so far. He is on the other side now. He is the one out of control, the one with vices, the one who had stumbled here in the middle of the night, restless, begging for a cure that cannot be explained. His is a different beast of begging. Reiner gets drunk on lips, on hands between his thighs and fingernails down his back. But the sensation is the same. In the morning, the pain is the same. 

“Why did you come here?” Reiner asks. He already knows.

Porco is splayed out in his chair like a dead man, and when his gaze flickers up to Reiner, his breath quiet, there is something utterly empty in his eyes. It sends a shiver through Reiner’s heart, and he thinks, perhaps, he does not know anything.

“They told me I wouldn’t remember,” Porco mutters.

Reiner stands in the shadows. “…remember what?” 

His brow furrows, and he stares at Reiner as if Reiner is the only person he can see. “I was so scared,” he says, and he growls, grinding his teeth together, “of going in that place, of what I would be when I came out. I waited so fucking long to be the one in that chamber, and when it was finally my turn, I couldn’t fucking do it. They threw me inside, like a fucking animal.”

His eyes shine in the darkness. 

“They told me I wouldn’t remember,” he says. “Did they lie to you too?”

They lied to Reiner about many things. 

“No,” Reiner says, and he tries to remember if he is telling the truth. He tries not to gag. But Porco does not give him the chance to think. He is grinding his teeth like a storm, his fingernails dug into the arms of the chair. 

“They told me I wouldn’t remember,” he hisses. “But I fucking remember. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up, on the floor. It was burned into my mind like a fucking, like, brand, or some shit. I can still see it.”

When Porco turns his face away, Reiner can no longer see the tears on his face.

“I can still taste it,” he says. 

Reiner lingers in the shadows. There is another confession on Porco’s tongue, another memory that has been etched in the lightwaves of his dreams, another sight that he will never outlive. But Porco says nothing. The drink has kicked in. And he is quiet, slumped down in the chair until his heels slip on the floor and he falls further in the chair, his arms hanging limply off the sides, and Reiner is sure he has faded to darkness.

The second Reiner moves, one bare foot across the floorboards, Galliard stumbles upright, his boots scuffing against each other, and shoves past him, snatching the bottle on his way out the door. 


	6. poison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> january 2018  
> explicit sexual content, choking, breathplay

Galliard keeps the hand there to hold him down. His fingernails graze Reiner's skin, but the pressure comes from the palm, from the way his fingers latch onto Reiner's jaw and punish him for breathing too hard. Don't fucking speak, Galliard had said that first night, when they had fucked mercilessly against the end of his bed. I don't wanna fucking kiss you. I don't want to see your face or hear your fucking voice. 

He can see Reiner's face now. He's got one hand on Reiner's throat, shutting him the hell up, the other hooked around the back of Reiner's thigh, legs caught up over Galliard's hips as Galliard drives into him, panting. Reiner lets him. They lock gazes in the dim light, Galliard's cock buried as deep into him as he can get it, and the hand on his throat tightens with the narrowing of Galliard's eyes. 

I told you not to fucking look at me, he had said that second night, after he came on Reiner's stomach. Reiner had ignored that command, because there was something about Galliard that he could not figure out, something that he thought he might be able to decipher at midnight by kissing his neck and jerking his cock. He had found, instead, an angry poison that left scratches along his back and told him not to come back. 

He is back, Galliard's hand wrapped around his throat, fingers and thumb pressing in on his blood, and when Galliard comes, finishing with a shake of his thighs and his fingernails digging into Reiner's flesh, the grip tightens and for a moment, drunk on pain, Reiner's world goes black. He comes to with a sharp breath when the hand on his throat is released. When he blinks, he sees Galliard watching him with pursed lips.

"This is going to bruise," Reiner says later.

Galliard shoves his boots on. "Be glad it's not your fucking face." 


	7. pervert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> may 2018  
> explicit sexual content, daddy kink, choking, breath play

The word comes from his mouth before he can stop it. He didn't realize that he was thinking about it, not now, not like this, not beneath the low-burning candlelight with his hands twisted in the sheets. But it has always been there, hasn't it, a burn on his brain, lingering inside him until it can come back to life. 

He's never had time to think, to get lost in things past, things done, things that have wiped their hands clean and tossed him aside. He has been too present.

Until now. Now, looking back is all he can do. He can't see a future when he is ten years behind, and there is no future that he would want to see anyways. There will be nothing there for him, but there are footprints in his wake that he has never seen, so he turns back to see them. His head spins with thoughts of things long gone, things that always come at the wrong time.

The word drops from his tongue like a gunshot. It balloons in the hollow room like a swollen, beating heart that will blow up in his face.

Or maybe it won't.

Maybe tonight was the right time. 

At first, Galliard says nothing. His shoulders lock for a moment and his eyelids flutter like he is fighting to keep them shut. He hears, but he says nothing, and the moment passes, another word lost in the heat of their sex, another second that will go unmentioned when the candles flicker out. 

Then Reiner says it again, and Galliard hisses under his breath. He tightens his hand around Reiner's throat, his grip a vice that presses down in rhythm. He rides Reiner like he is nothing. He is nothing, except the apology that Galliard will never hear, another footprint lost in the dust, and for that, he doesn't mind the bruises on his neck. 

But he can't help himself, and when he says it again, Galliard's eyes flash open. His gaze glows animalistic against the dark walls, only a single slant of moonlight piercing through the night to cast a white streak across his chest.

There is a twist of his jaw, fingernails pressed deep into Reiner's skin, and then Reiner's hand is around his cock, guided by a steel grip.

"You fucking pervert," Galliard growls. "Say it again."

His hand grips fast around Reiner's throat, and Reiner falters.

His hand grips tighter. 

"Say it again," Galliard commands, and he obeys.

"Daddy," Reiner cries, and Galliard shudders. His shoulders clench as he pushes himself down onto Reiner's cock, his eyes shaking shut."

_"Say it again."_

_"Daddy."_

Reiner comes on his next thrust, his hips clenching and bucking as he moans, muttering words and prayers beneath his tongue. Galliard is not long after. His come smears between Reiner's fingers like a spiderweb, hot when it drips onto his stomach. Galliard is still shaking when he rolls over. The mattress trembles as he falls back onto the bed, two quivering bodies lying in the darkness, and their eyes meet for just a second. There is something quiet that Reiner sees in him, and- surely- he sees it in Reiner too.

One silent moment is all it takes before Galliard is clambering out of bed and wordlessly tugging his pants back on. He disappears into the night, his footsteps leaving noisy echoes on Reiner's floor, and Reiner is alone again with his thoughts, wondering, remembering.

 


	8. endurance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> october 2018  
> alcohol abuse, vomiting

The first time, Reiner doesn't know what to expect. He stands listless, anxious, hovering, and collects the smeared glasses that litter the floor. He draws the curtains. He holds the bucket when Galliards shudders and heaves, leaving weeping candles lit through the sleepless night.

The first time, Reiner tosses Galliard into bed and lets him sleep it off, too shaken to think anything else, too distracted by the empty bottles by the door, by the trembling in his own fingertips. 

The next time, it's not him. He is the last chance, when Pieck has tied her hair back and can't take it anymore. She finds Reiner then, in the deep of the night. The tears are unwritten on her face, and she does not have to explain. He goes where he is needed, a good soldier until the end.

Pieck stands guard and Reiner hushes Galliard: you'll wake someone, and we'll all be in trouble then, won't we, we've got to look out for each other, haven't we. The dawn comes in silence, a grey reminder of another night gone, another night to follow. 

This time, Galliard stands in his doorway. 

Reiner doesn't know what he remembers, if he remembers anything at all. But he knows pain when he sees it. He knows the temptation of numbness, the sinking, the falling, and worst of all, the waking. But it is not a cure. And he tells Galliard this when his hands shake, terrifyingly sober, praying for the darkness to end. 

There's nothing to do, Reiner says in beating hearts, but to endure.

 


	9. lousy hit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> january 2019, three sentence drabbles  
> sexual content, car sex, alcohol abuse

Their breaths cloud together in the darkness. Galliard’s fingers grasp at the slick windowpane, trailing slippery dark streaks in their wake: an interrupted handprint on the steaming glass, a feverish reach for a tether to the real world as it begins to disappear around him. 

Their lips fumble together again. The graze of two-day stubble rubs coarse against Galliard’s skin, and it’s all he can do not to beg for more. 

 

  

“She won’t say anything,” is the quick reassurance Galliard provides, as much to Reiner as it is to himself. There are enemies everywhere, and Pieck’s dark eyes darting between them had given him the slimmest moment of doubt. If he’s been wrong about her this whole time-

“She won’t say anything,” Reiner repeats, but he leaves soon after that, and Galliard wipes the taste from his lips, wondering why he cares so much. 

 

 

It’s cheap beer: bottled brown, the kind that tastes more like nothing the more you drink of it, bottles on the floor again. It’s water. How much must a man drink to lose himself? To find himself? 

“Please,” Galliard mutters from his knees. Reiner’s hand hangs in his trembling clutch; his forehead, when it lands against Reiner’s knuckles, is warm, the roots of his hair unwashed. “I can’t do this alone.”

 

 

“You’re losing your touch,” Galliard remarks before he even has Reiner against the shower wall. They haven’t changed- they won’t. They’re alone in here, between the grimy tiles of the cadets’ latrines, and it’s hotter when Galliard keeps his bloodied hand wraps on. 

“I’m old,” Reiner breathes as one of those bloodied hand wraps digs down the front of his pants. His elbows bang against the shower wall as he clenches for something to hold onto, his bruised skin breaking on impact; but he can barely feel it, not when Galliard’s teeth are tearing through his shirt. 

“You’re lazy,” Galliard growls. “And a lousy hit.”


	10. canvas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> january 2019  
> explicit sexual content, blood play, role reversal, choking, bruising, marking

The scars stitch Reiner's skin together: white lines between his shoulders, an echo of something long past, a beckon to something fresh. The traces twist with his contortions, stretching as his muscles flex; it looks painful, the pull of taut scarred skin across bones, and Galliard thinks that his fingers would fit perfectly between those claws marks. 

He tried, once, without asking. He could have pretended it was a mistake, how hard his fingernails dug into Reiner's flesh, how sharp their edges cut between the white space of his old scars. But there's no mistaking when he draws blood, when he smears it down Reiner's back, and when Reiner doesn't ask him to stop.

It leaves Galliard weak, the dust of someone else's blood trapped beneath his nails. It seeps into the lines of his fingerprints like a stain. He takes his hands away, without a word, and averts his gaze. 

 

 

He catches Reiner in the darkness, and he is not prepared for what he finds.

"I don't know what you want from me, Galliard," he spits. "I don't know why you put up with me, why we keep  _doing this_ , and after everything, we keep coming back to each other, like we just can't fucking help ourselves."

"I don't want anything," Galliard has already said, but protestations cannot see in the dark. Reiner Braun can.

"You want to feel sorry for yourself," he hisses. "You want me to be the one to hit you, because that means you don't have to blame yourself anymore. You want someone to ruin you, because then at least there's nothing left to fuck up."

 

 

"I see what's mine," he says with a hand around Reiner's throat, "and I take it."

They are not careful about their bruises. No one gives a shit, that's why; in two days all traces will be gone. Their skins are canvases, or punching bags, or sometimes both at once. Galliard is losing the purple rings on his knuckles from the night when Reiner had him pinned against the wall. So he takes what's his and tightens his grip until he draws those same rings just beneath Reiner's jaw. 

"These aren't regulation," Reiner says when he looks in the mirror, and Galliard carefully considers where best to punch him for making such a stupid fucking joke.


	11. the killing bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> april 2019  
> explicit sexual content, choking, fighting, blood, breath play

"No quarter," Galliard says.

He squeezes the leather belt across the palms of his hands, a red burn on his skin. He bates his breath, and the dark room wavers, waits, watches. His grip tightens. The silence devours, and the walls weigh with something unspoken, the shadows shifting and sighing as they draw closer, heavier, as the leather squeezes through his hands and the ceiling threatens to come down on them.

He can see it, in his mind, clawed into the bedsheets, scratched into their skin. He can feel it, in fraying threads and jagged scars. But he holds his breath until he hears it loosen from the tongue. 

His hands jerk back. The leather groans, the walls closing in- then he lets go. The belt from his grasp and he watches the red lines flame around Reiner's throat as he gasps for an answer.

Reiner gives in, finally, whispering to the room: "No quarter."

 

 

It begins with fists. 

Soldiers crowd the corners of the mat, half-naked, winded, shoving together in skins. The gym jostles with rough murmurs and bruised ribs as they crane, together, to get a better view. Their faces are shadows beneath the harsh spotlights. They look like the bottles on Galliard's windowsill: dirty, empty, unrecognizable. He wonders if they would fall as easily as bottles. Push one and others will go too, like soldiers do. 

The door is locked, then bolted; metal rings in the air, echoing through the crowd until Galliard thinks he can taste it. He wipes his lips, smearing a red streak across his chin. When his bare feet sink into the mat, the room jeers. The soldiers' shouts swarm the hollow gym. He feels dizzy. The scabs on his knuckles are burning. He clenches his jaw, rolls his neck, and curls his hands into solid fists; under the stark spotlight, his skin is unmarred again, unbroken. The soldiers roar something that in a dialect he doesn't understand. This is the game, and Galliard knows how to play. 

He swings hard. He breaks skin. He hits the mark every time, a rocky fist leaving rainbow welts on Reiner's shattered cheekbones. They don't play well together, and Reiner loses again, giving up before the fight has even begun. He pushes back with half-hearted blows, but Galliard knocks him off his feet. Arm to the throat, knee to the stomach, crack of the jaw, blood down his chest. Reiner falls like a man, not a bottle; he has already been broken, and two minutes on the mat is never enough.

The soldiers hiss. A lieutenant elbows out of the crowd and hands Galliard a knife.

"Show us something we don't know," he commands.

 

 

Reiner always loses. 

Galliard's first draw of blood lit him on fire: his fist cracking Reiner's nose, shooting a spark of vengeance through his veins. He curled his fingers and landed his mark, and the mass of soldiers got off on the hatred in his eyes. He reveled in it, then. He was born again, the strength of titans boiling in his blood. He felt it in every step, every bite, every pulse. He won, then again, each time, breaking Reiner over and over until the man went limp on the ground. Reiner fell like he belonged there, and for a moment, Galliard was someone else.

But two minutes on the mat is never enough. 

 

 

Tongue between teeth, they are caught in the fire. 

There may never be another black day to tear themselves apart in each other's beds, so they fuck with a desperation that Galliard has never felt before: with grief, with torment, both of them searching, neither of them ever finding. Reiner kisses like he wants it to mean something, but every night when the door closes, it is the same: his lips like ice when he presses Galliard to the wall. When the candles go out, his body is cold too- something else in Galliard's hands.

Galliard rides him hard. Shoulders twisted, body burning, he pins Reiner's hands over his head, bruised palms the flesh for sharp nails to claw in and take hold. Reiner takes it, or he wants it, and Galliard can never tell. There's only moonlight in his eyes, a silver reflection of their hollow night witness. He is the shape of a man, the silhouette of a light burnt out years ago. He says nothing, barely breathes. They finish on the same rhythm; for a few ghostly moments in the dark, Galliard could believe that he is not even there. 

"I can't stand you," he says to the mirror.

His words drip down the shower walls. He speaks to the empty lines between the dewy tiles, to the space from himself to the glass, to the ghost that is fading beneath the pounding stream of hot water. Steam enfolds them; it leaks across the tile in hot rivers, leading nowhere, and it clouds his gaze in the mirror, his anger lost somewhere in his foggy reflection. 

He turns to look over his shoulder, fingers clenched against the sink. Reiner is looking back at him. 

"I don't blame you," Reiner says from the other side of the room. His voice is barely a murmur over the running water, and though they are claw marks vanishing on Galliard's skin, blood tracked across the washroom floor, it is the biggest rise Galliard has ever gotten out of him.

His fingers bruise themselves against the sink. He turns back, and his reflection disappears beneath the steam.

"You fucking asshole," he says. "I wish you would just hate me."


	12. again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> august 2019  
> explicit sexual content

"Do that again," Porco commands.

Words go unspoken in bed, commands better given through fingernails and bitemarks. Their nights aren't silent, by any means. There are breaths and sighs and the creak of the mattress beneath their writhing bodies. Sometimes Reiner can't help but moan, no matter how hard Porco's hand clenches across his mouth. But this is the first time Porco has spoken to him, told him to do something other than  _shut up_ or  _get on your knees_.

Reiner hesitates until Porco grabs his hand and does it for him. He takes Reiner by the wrist and drags it up his sweat streaked stomach to circle Reiner’s fingers around the soft skin of his nipple. He doesn’t let go, at first; he holds Reiner’s hand there, the rhythm of his ride slowing as he lets his fingers brush down Reiner’s arm, fingernails grazing gently across his skin. His lips part for breath as he holds Reiner’s elbow. 

It’s another moment before Porco's gaze flicks up to Reiner’s face, and their eyes meet, the soft and silence lingering between them in the dim evening light. Reiner thumbs experimentally at the nipple, warm skin beneath his fingerprint. 

Heat blossoms in Porco’s face. His lips part further, and a soft breath escapes him.

“That’s cute,” Reiner says without thinking.

Porco flushes red. A bead of sweat rolls down his brow when he arches forward, hands sliding forward to grip onto Reiner’s shoulders, fingernails into skin, before he pushes back down onto Reiner’s cock and finishes him off in a few quick and dirty thrusts that leaves them both with quivering thighs. 

It’s not until he’s finishing himself, hand moving fast and wet, that he knocks Reiner’s fingers away from his chest and growls, “shut up,” in his face. 

But this time, with less acidity. 


	13. dreaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> october 2019

The smell of antiseptic hangs in the air. Sharp. Nauseating. The smell of stitches and wheelchairs and bullet holes. So clean that it burns. It stings his nostrils when he takes his first breath, coming back to life. A soldier returning to his post. A warrior, who never surrenders. 

In the distance, a scream. Metal bedframe shaking on the old floorboards. Blood dried in the splinters. Exposed bone. Sterile saw. Salt, alcohol. When Reiner jerks awake, he can nearly taste the wine. 

“Bad dreams?” Galliard asks. 

He lifts a bottle from the floor, and it glints in the dusty sunlight. It stains green like glass across the wooden floor, across Pieck’s curled toes. He takes the first drink. He swallows, a red bead clinging to his lips, and he hands the bottle to Reiner.

He mutters, “If only it’d all been a dream.” 


	14. outpost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> october 2019

The nights here are different. Dry air, harsh wind. The sharp tongue of pine needles, the distant bleat of wild herds. A cold so brittle, Reiner’s skin might break if he stays out much longer. He stays out, regardless. He lingers on the outskirts of the base, as far as he is allowed to stray from his tent. His boots stand firm in the sand. His eyes burning when it blows in his face, tearing up. The salt dries on his face in a frost. He wishes he was a smoker. For the warmth. For the familiar. 

Galliard joins him at the outpost. Pensive, gloved, the collar of his jacket tucked over his chin. “You’ll freeze to death,” he says with a furrowed brow.

Reiner stares over the sand dunes. “No, i won’t.”

“No,” Galliard scoffs. He sighs. He zips his jacket all the way up and turns his face towards the sky. A wide blue horizon. A moon unfamiliar, though Reiner is sure— as he was sure before— that they are all counting the same stars. 

“No,” Galliard repeats, softer, the moonlight on his face. “You won’t.”


	15. battlefield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> november 2019, things you said too quietly

He smells iron.

The stench of blood, of death, noxious in the air like a disease. It is the curse of the battlefield, and it seeps, weeping into the burnt grass. The world is caught in its vapors, multiplying, stinging, burning the air until it moves in waves. They swim past Reiner, only moments, one at a time, and he falls in slow motion. 

His armored plates creak. They grate against each other like cracks in the earth— something to swallow him whole as he loses the grips in his fingers. As the world goes black and time slows down and he thinks this, finally, is the end.

A screech. Bellowing, echoing from beyond. Like a dream. In the sudden brightness, he can barely hear, but he raises his head to the echo. Blood. Iron.

From across the battlefield, he can feel it. The heat of the steam rising from Porco’s head. His staggered footsteps, his jacket undone. The weight in his limbs as he struggles to stay upright. The split second of pure silence as their eyes meet across the devastation, and Porco mouths something that Reiner can’t hear.

Then, blood. 


	16. summertime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> november 2019, things you said after you kissed me

He is sweet, unlike the wine. Unlike Reiner had imagined he might taste— sharp and bitter, with a stinging aftertaste that lingers on the tongue. But he is sweet. Chapped lips, with mellow warmth and all the right notes from the summer air. Strawberries, cream, and the ocean breeze. He kisses sweetly, lips pressed up against Reiner's, holding them together for as long as it takes for one of them to spill their wine.

Porco pulls back, dabbing for stains. His heavy jacket lays over his shoulders, even in the summertime. The sun will set soon, and Reiner blinks through golden shadows to watch him press with a napkin. His face turned down in one clear moment of concentration, and once satisfied with his work, a glance up again, light eyes glittering like stars.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he murmurs, brow furrowed. He stares at Reiner, flushed with heat, and glances away as he wipes his lips on the sleeve of his jacket. He doesn’t move away as he does it. He sits, gaze turned to the ground, and his hand comes away, fingers poked out and curled around the soft hem of the sleeve. Just at the spot where he wiped his lips.

“i’m not making fun of you,” Reiner says softly.

“i know,” Porco says. He purses his lips together and glances back up at Reiner, his face softening for a moment. “It's just, when you look at me like that—”

He stops, words trailing from his breath. His eyelashes lift, his eyes growing in perfect circles, and his lips hang apart. Blushing pink. Touched. Kissed.

“Never mind,” he murmurs. “We should, you know, we should get back.”


	17. moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> december 2019  
> explicit sexual content

Something sticks to Reiner’s fingers. He pries them from the bar top and wipes it on his pants leg. He would have guessed the beer was too watered-down to leave any stains. A thud behind him, and a curse. The tavern tilts in his vision as he turns his attention back to the darts game. He’s kept his seat warm all night, hands full to prevent awkward conversation. The bartender rings for last call, and Reiner drains his drink.

“Watch,” Pieck says from the throwing line. “Like this.”

Her dart sticks square in the center of the board. Colt attempts to imitate her form. He exaggerates, holding a hand out to steady his stance. He stumbles instead. A misstep at the last minute means a dart fallen flat. It sticks in the wall beneath the board, before coming loose and dropping to the floor. 

Chuffed, Pieck pushes Colt to the other end of the bar. “Better luck next time. Finish your beer before they close for curfew; you’ve only had half.”

A barstool squeaks against the floor. Galliard slides into the seat with his mug, jacket draped over his shoulders. White foam spills over the edges of the glass. It drips onto the bar top, and Reiner reaches out to dab at it, a warmth pooling in his stomach. Floating through his veins. Drunker than he thought, after sitting still all night. Galliard watches him deep his finger into the foam, then wipe it off somewhere else. He furrows his brow. 

“It’ll stain,” Reiner says. 

Galliard rubs a finger on the rim of his glass. “I don’t know why you would bother. Have you seen the state of the toilets?” 

Curfew is close. In the distance, the bell is rung over Liberio— the last hour of the night before doors are closed, lights turned off. Last call is served, and the door of the tavern’s unlit bathroom slams shut. It swings on its hinges. It clatters in the frame, and then Reiner is pressed up against it, a hand in his hair, fingers clawing at his shirt collar. Tiny scratches on his collarbone. Galliard’s lips mash into his, their chests slamming together. Reiner’s jacket scratches against the old door. He feels Galliard's hand pulling on his collar, cuffing him, and Galliard's teeth, leaving a mark on the corner of his lip. 

In the cold and dark, their breaths linger in the air. Lit for a moment by a crack in the wall, moonlight, and then gone, the gap between them closing again. Galliard kisses him with nails in his shoulder. A hand down Reiner's chest, scratching him. Reiner breathes at his touch. Cold fingers, through his shirt, leaving hot traces down his skin. His hands shake. He fumbles and clings to Galliard's shoulders, as Galliard rips his belt apart and shoves an ice-cold hand down Reiner's pants. Reiner gasps. Can’t help it when he moans.

“Shut up,” Galliard hisses. He fumbles with his own belt. Grabs one of Reiner’s hands from his shoulders and wraps it around his length. Grits his teeth, pins Reiner to the door with his elbow. “They’ll hear you. Fuck.”

Moonlight glints in Galliard’s eyes, the brightest blue. Then he closes them, his eyelids fluttering as he jerks Reiner off. He clenches his jaw. His arm pressed across Reiner’s chest, his fingers grasping at the sleeve of Reiner’s jacket. _“Fuck.”_

Their hips buck together. Reiner bites his lip. Closes his eyes, though it makes no difference in the darkness. Makes no difference if the night is black or the day is white, if it was a tavern toilet or a soft bed. Makes no difference.

He curls his lips, teeth hard, and drops his head forward, hand clenching on Galliard’s shoulder. He jerks his hand in rhythm with Galliard’s harsh breaths, fingers less cold now, blood pumping, stomach clenching. The air between them heats with steam, with sweat, and he feels Galliard’s arm release him, fumble for him again in the darkness, hand grasping at his collarbone, his neck, his jaw, and their lips brought together again, hearts pounding. Wet, sloppy, gnawing at each other, hands working, until one of them spills over the edge, and the other is not far behind, their hands slick and warm. 

Galliard breathes, heavy. Hands on either side of Reiner, he hangs his head and takes a breath, belt undone, shirt untucked. His hair is out of place, and he stands upright when Reiner thinks about fixing it for him. He tightens his belt and pushes a hand back over his hair, chest heaving in the darkness. The moonlight exposes his shadow. 

Reiner does the same, and the streets are quiet when they take the tavern’s back exit. Galliard zips his jacket up in the alleyway, shoves his hands into his pockets, and glances at Reiner, up and down, before turning to head for the main street.

“Half an hour til curfew,” he says. His breath comes in thick clouds, heavier than before. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Reiner wishes he had washed his hands. “See you tomorrow.”


End file.
